It takes an evil person to play games with their partner's health.

Uff Dan that's awful advice recommending a person yo-yo diet 30lbs on and off their body for the sake of someone else's fetish. I always agree with you but you've totally lost me here. Gender certainly matters, but reverse the genders in this case as a thought experiment - your advice is crazy-talk yes?

Maybe somebody has a creative solution to how this couple can have fun without permanently fucking up the part of his brain that regulates metabolism, appetite and body fat?

I'm guessing Dan's answer would be different if this question came in today. 2009 is a lifetime ago, in sex column years.

If feeding him is the real turn-on, how about steering away from junk food and stuffing his face with
20 foods that contain zero calories
Apples
Apricots
Beetroot
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Celery
Watercress
Cucumber
Garlic
Grapefruit
Green beans
Kale
Leeks
Lemons
Lettuce
Onions
Raspberries
Strawberries
Rutabaga
Watermelon

What you described is called weight cycling* and it dramatically amplifies the likelihood of diabetes, heart attacks, and stroke.

*https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/dangers-yo-yo-dieting/

I can't get on board with the advice on this one. The gain/lose cycle of binge eating and dieting is unhealthy, beyond just the rose-colored idea of 'Oh well, I died at 75 instead of 77, but I had some amazing orgasms, so who cares?'. It's also not something he can necessarily just shut off down the road if the two break up. It can lead to developing an eating disorder, if one isn't already in play, and those are a living hell.

So, gaining THIRTY POUNDS is a non-starter for someone who is over age 30. This kid is 26, so he'll probably have more trouble gaining the pounds than losing them, but that changes over time.

That being said, there are probably other ways to skin the cat - it depends on where LW's really are. Is it the act of feeding, or the weight gain? (for eg, I've tried many non-smoking ways to get high off marijuana; but smoking remains the only version which I enjoy, even if other methods do get me high. It's something about the act of inhaling a drug that does for me, as if i'm doing it to myself, rather than simply allowing a chemical reaction to occur).

If it's the weight gain, well... it's not vore territory but it'll be very difficult to do this safely and reversibly. If it's the feeding, well, the modern urbanist diet is pretty healthy, it can sustain an extra cake down the pie hole once a month.

I wonder how much he weighs today.

DonnyKlicious @4, as blogger Cliff Pervocracy (I think) once said, there's no such thing as negative calorie food, unless perhaps you consume large quantities of ice. The "zero calories" thing is a myth.

But I don't dispute your overall point, as the foods you listed are low in calories relative to their volume. Don't know how I'd feel about the boyfriend "stuffing his face" with onions and garlic though. Or broccoli, for that matter.

Of all the columns to reprint. Ugh.
Hopefully the guy is still alive and healthy. Some fetishes should not be indulged - literally.

Mmmm, rutabaga!

Oddly I like the advice. I've gained and lost 30lbs and more often in my life. Putting weight on easily has got me to the gym--good for me in every respect. Now I feel bad about the ass-waving in the skanky sex-clubs, though with my condoms I was always anal about being anal...

"get off the rack...you get to determine...how much weight he gains"

WTF?

Why not find a guy who's already overweight? A junk food rollercoaster of weight gain/loss does do real harm, so it's wrong.

p.s. by "it's wrong" I don't mean I'm gonna call the cops if someone's doing it to themselves, but it is wrong to do to someone else.

The weight gain issue seems to be really pushing people's buttons. But it doesn't seem any more dangerous than sex with strangers or extreme sports.

@14 beccoid
True. But there's a difference between what chooses to do with oneself, and what one chooses to do with someone else. While the BF doesn't need to actually DO it just because his dom says so, that doesn't mean it's not wrong for her to ask him to do something that harms him.

I didn't think I was into this kink at all, but after reading Donny's list, not quite so sure. I think I'm very down to someone tying me up and feeding me strawberries and raspberries and watermelon, etc.

curious2 @15, my understanding of the letter is that he ~does~ choose to do it to himself. She only says "he's started to eat too much to please me", not "he's started to eat too much at my behest". He has a strong urge to please, he knows about her fetish, and he derives enjoyment from seeing her happy and turned on. I'm gonna assume he's aware of the risks. Does it really matter if someone is choosing to eat Big Macs every day because they really like junk food, or because they really like their partner, who has a feeding fetish? It's still their choice. I'll concede that the line between personal choice and coercion can get really blurred in an abusive relationship (and perhaps even more so in an abusive D/s relationship), but I can't see any evidence of it here.

That said, I do agree that it was irresponsible of Dan to suggest that yo-yo dieting "won't be doing him any real or lasting harm". He should have ran this letter past a medical professional specialising in nutrition. Hopefully, as a self-confessed "fitness nut", the LW knew better than that.

Perhaps an acceptable compromise would be for the LW to take control of her boyfriend's diet, as Dan suggests (it sounds like that would play into both of their kinks), but instead of gaining and losing weight all the time, keep him on a balanced healthy diet and build more of a "scene" around any scheduled indulgences. Like, maybe every couple of weeks they'd watch feeder porn and he'd eat a cupcake or a burger in front of her, and then strip as she reads the calorie count and dirty talks about all that fat going to his thighs and belly, etc. Or something along these lines. More in the realm of weight gain roleplay than actual weight gain. Halfway into the "vore territory" ;)

@17 Lost Margarita "She only says "he's started to eat too much to please me", not "he's started to eat too much at my behest""

Point well made! (My mistake; that does swing her behavior into omission instead of [as I stated in error] commission, which is somewhat better.)

Before reading past your paragraph one I was about to recommend she modify/control her BF's diet...but your last paragraph not only did that it just nails it, I think, for what would be ideal dom behavior for this LW.

"You can change someone - just not into someone you like".

LW made her boyfriend fat(ter), and now she's starting to lose attractive to him for it. Q.E.D.

I didn't see the date on this one - it's one of the old ones, right?
But this is terrible advice from a health standpoint! So much bad stuff happens along with those 30 pounds and they will get harder and harder to lose. If you wanted to keep the spirit of it but not the potentially devastating effects to this man's metabolism and insulin sensitivity, you could just cycle within a week or two: order him to eat ----- for a day, then order him to eat decent stuff for the next 10.
But - yikes, this seems like a disaster.

Might a feeder be able to get off on someone ze's feeding packing on muscle rather than fat, or is the cultural association between adipose and poor health or the particular appearance of adipose as compared to muscle part of the turn-on for most feeders? If it's more about someone getting bigger as a result of the feeding than it is about them getting fat, specifically, or the health impacts of gaining weight (real or perceived), feeding someone a protien-heavy diet and ordering zir to do an intensive weight training routine might address concerns like those FAT expressed.

@7, tangent: Edibles have so far had zero effect on me, while inhalation (smoke and vaporized volitiles) has; I suspect there's an actual pharmacological difference between different methods of cannabinoid delivery.

@12: If it's about the amount and kind of food one is feeding, then dating already-fat people is the way to go, as they require more calories to simply keep the same weight. If it's the gaining/visibly growing larger, that won't do it.

@17: If the root is control, and diet is the vector for exercising control, that could work (IIRC, eating disorders are, for many people, about establishing a sense of control, and it wouldn't shock me if that were the case for eroticized eating, especially given the D/S elements already noted in many cases).

@19: She made him fatter and is/was MORE attracted to him, but feels/felt guilty because of cultural perceptions of weight, especially adipose weight, and health.

@19, Sportlandia... I think you misunderstood. She actually said that she'll be hotter for him as he continues to get hugely fat, and that exercise, while beneficial for his health, will give him a fitter body that will inevitably turn her off. This seems like too risky a game to play with your loved one's health, and it's actually kind of fucked up that her sexual desire is contingent on his obesity and her control over it. Clearly she loves him enough to inquire about the dangers of her kink...but I don't see this being a win for anyone but her in the long run.

Also, how the hell does this work? Does he say stop, or does SHE say stop? Is this regulated by a safeword? What's the goal here...do you stop short of making them vomit, or do you WANT them to get sick? How MUCH does she actually feed him in one session, and how frequent are these sessions? Has anyone else here experienced this kink, directly or indirectly? ...I have SO many questions...

Both of these people sound self-hating. A fitness nut with a feeding fetish? Boyfriend, I hope you ran!

I agree, this is not a healthy thing to do to anyone. Worst advice I have read here.

@15. curious. Suppose the letter read 'I like riding a motorbike and my partner has expressed an interest in riding pillion. How far can I indulge him?'. There would not be the shocked moralized reaction there is to feeding. The reaction arises because fatphobia is the last standing acceptable prejudice in polite circles. Racism and homophobia are out; transphobia is a hard one for people to negotiate, but few people want to sign up to inflicting psychic pain on or endangering vulnerable minorities. It's the curled lip at fatties, then. A convenient prejudice because it can dress itself up in concern, and is compounded of classism, something Americans have a marked aversion to considering.

@24 & 25. For heaven's sake, imagine they're gay or trans or kinky or something you can associate with wanting to feel validated in some kind of non-normalcy.... Surely your moral imagination can stretch to that?

While Rumpole teaches us that there is no pleasure worth sacrificing for the sake of five more years in the Old People's Home in Weston-super-Mare, X's doing something to please Y can constrain Y. LW here seems to have some inkling that she could become a rather horrible person, while BF reminds me of the "ideal subject" in the Thomas Mann story "Mario and the Magician". Either break up for their common good or CMY.

This girl sounds like she cloned my husband. 10/10 taste!

@26 Harriet_by_the_bulrushes
First, warning to all, I'm afraid this post is going to get dull even by my standards. (So sorry; but Harriet did ask me.)

Second, @15 I should have written "TO someone else" instead of "WITH someone else". (Even though my point was ill-taken as @17 Lost Margarita pointed out that he "he ~does~ choose to do it to himself".)

Third, I couldn't agree more and many times have said myself that prejudice against overweight people "is the last standing acceptable prejudice".

I find quite interesting your hypothetical about whether one should indulge a partner who wants to ride pillion (credit goes to google for defining that one for me!). (For all I know, maybe "riding pillion" is comparatively dangerous to being morbidly obese.)

A difference between your hypothetical and the LW's BW is that riding pillion is something one DOES, and being overweight is something one's body IS. My point being that, perhaps another side of the coin of the concern for the BF here is that he will be the OBJECT of the prejudice you rightly call out.

But beyond all that, I am absolutely absorbed by imagining the comparison case of indulging one's partner in riding pillion despite the risks (I'm willing to assume are comparative). One factor that tugs on me if I put myself into your hypothetical, is that saying no to riding pillion would be saying no to the physical embrace between of the driver by the rider.

But I'd still feel that encouraging the partner to get their own motorcycle would be a good move. (Hey there's connection too between drivers of separate bikes.) But if that encouragement is not practical or not successful, particularly since riding pillion has the practical benefit of getting the pair from point A to point B (whereas eating too much does not have an analogous practical/functional benefit), I would be willing to indulge a pillion-preferring partner.

However, I think a shortcoming in your hypothetical is that the partner isn't riding pillion to please the driver. (Whereas the LW's BF is reportedly choosing to overeat because the LW wishes that and the BF wants to please the LW.) So I think I'm saying that it would be different if the partner was only asking to be indulged in riding pillion to please the driver; in that case the driver would have just as much responsibility as the LW, and be just as wrong.

@29. curious. I think you bring out a few things that are ill-conceived in my comparison. Like there are features of the situation with one person riding passenger on a motorbike that are specific, or take one's mind away from the purported equivalence, for instance the suggestion of their having to get somewhere together.

The more that someone is always riding passenger, the more it's something they are i.e. permanently exposed to, as a risk, rather than just something they do. Riding pillion could well be something a partner does e.g. to please the rider, to share in their adventures and lifestyle, etc.

I don't think someone 30lbs above a BMI of 24 is going to attract adverse or prejudicial attention for being fat. 'Chunky' or 'solid', maybe; but this is over half of all Americans, I think.

The comparison is not too off-the-wall in some respects in that it brings out that it's not unconscionable to most people to have someone riding on the back of their bike, even when that position would normally be thought of as risker than having two hands on the handlebars. Whereas it raises moral hackles of quite a different order for someone to be a 'feeder'. This would be irrespective of the degree of risk courted by each activity.

@30 Harriet_by_the_bulrushes
"I think you bring out a few things that are ill-conceived in my comparison."

In my own very boring way. It's my "very particular set of skills".

I think your point is well-taken. I honestly do think I'd be more willing to urge someone to ride on the motorcycle I don't have (and would be extra-careful driving while they were on it with me), than I would be to force-feed someone like they were a duck making foie gras. Ditto if each of those choices were made without my urging, 1000% because they alone wanted it.

In part because the feeder thing squicks me out, and ill-spirited. (I think this is different than prejudice against overweight people.)

There are all sorts of reasons people become overweight (economic, psychological, etc.), and my heart goes out to them.

Wow, what a lot of fat shaming and false assumptions about being "overweight" here. I thought Stranger readers were a bit less ignorant.

Yes, cycling between dieting and gaining weight is definitely unhealthy, as we know now. But there are lots of healthy people out there who eat good quality food, get enough exercise, and who are still "overweight" or even "obese" by the current standards. The current standards were sold to the public before a lot of new evidence was uncovered that weight by itself is a poor predictor of bad health - and the current weight-weighted standards won't be current in twenty years, since other factors are much more important and our analytical tools are getting more sophisticated. "Common knowledge" is always 20 or 30 years behind current actual knowledge.

If she feeds him up to a weight he's comfortable with and she finds hot, then keeps him there by regulating his food over the course of every week, great. A fast day or two per week will actually make him more healthy, per current research, while allowing for more fun feeding on other days.. And a diet of good quality food (butter, it turns out, is healthy and protective, olive oil is great, most vegetable oils are not good for cell health) interrupted by an occasional hot-sex fast food meal is fine too. More power to them.

And to the ignorant and self righteous assholes who are making so many fat-shaming and spurious moral and biological claims - hey, fuck you. Repeating the same old crap fitness gurus and doctors who don't keep up have been spouting for the last few decades just makes you look too lazy to follow what's actually been happening in the research world.

@26 Harriet_by_the_bulrushes

"The reaction arises because fatphobia is the last standing acceptable prejudice in polite circles."

I'll consider that, but please consider this: it could be because struggling with one's weight is such a common issue that almost everyone faces. That could lead to weight gain being more "triggering" than motorcycles/skydiving/etc to someone that did not have a terrible experience with the latter.

Often former and recovered addicts have a visceral negative reaction to anything remotely resembling drug use, because they associate it with the dark place it took them. I had an ex who went to bartending school; he and his fellow students were accosted by a very angry addiction recovery support group that was meeting in the same event center. It's quite possible many freak out at the notion of deliberate weight gain because they've had a negative experience with it.

Heck, I've got a stuffing fetish (related to but distinct from feederism) and I've struggled with my weight my whole life. Maybe fetishizing my neuroses is my way of coping. Who knows? But I know not everyone reacts that way, and some people have a much tougher time addressing what flips their disgust switch.

Also, concerning the concern-trolling: the inverse has also been an issue for me. There's nary a woman who's expressed an intent to lose weight who hasn't had nearly a dozen well-meaning people insist, "But you look FINE!" There's so much paranoia about eating disorders and the appearance of being shallow/judgmental that it's become an almost obligatory answer. It's a terribly grating one, though, just as it would be were someone to tell someone who announced their intent to transition, "But you look FINE!"

@33 XiaoGui17 "It's quite possible many freak out at the notion of deliberate weight gain because they've had a negative experience with it."

I LOVE this theory; weight loss is hard.

"expressed an intent to lose weight who hasn't had nearly a dozen well-meaning people insist, "But you look FINE!" There's so much paranoia about eating disorders and the appearance of being shallow/judgmental that it's become an almost obligatory answer. It's a terribly grating one"

It is indeed. If I have some weight to lose, and have amassed the willpower to begin doing so, that answer (I kid you not, even from my bloody MD!) is extremely counterproductive to the necessary endeavor given the delicate balance of aforementioned willpower.

@31. curious. In terms of the affect the LW has, the feeding isn't 'ill-spirited'. She would find a hefty lover hot. In many parts of the world, across the Arab and non-Arab Middle East and in SE Asia, as far as I understand, the default desirable body size is heavier than in the US. Maybe because the risk--given the cost and availability of food, and the calorie expenditure needed to procure it--skewed in these countries (and still does) to being underweight, not overweight?

@33. XiaoGui. An erotic complex, like yours, could be a way of coping by fetishizing a neurosis; or a neurosis could arise because a fetish or taste is socially unacceptable, giving rise to cognitive dissonance. So long as someone is happy with their private behaviors in a relationship, and can withstand the measure of social disapproval they have to live with, I don't think it matters which of the two possibilities holds.

I take your point about people providing false reassurance re weight and health. This maybe happens because 'concern' is not genuinely decoupled from 'disapproval', even 'hatred'.